


Finding Family

by Katsuko



Series: Stories of the Ragnarok [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Families of Choice, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1498033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katsuko/pseuds/Katsuko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After SHIELD falls, Steve and Sam go off in search of Bucky. Steve <i>really</i> should have known that his unconventional family would step up to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Three Month Reprieve

**Author's Note:**

> So, I saw _The Winter Soldier_ about a week or so ago, and for some reason it took me this goddamned long to start writing fic. Can I blame working at the movie theater and being in several showings of the film for my slow?

In all honesty, they should have expected it to happen a hell of a lot sooner.

With SHIELD's secrets, as well as those of Hydra, having gone viral on the web within twenty seconds of Natasha releasing them into the wild, chances had been pretty high that either she or Steve would be receiving a visit or phone call from one of their teammates in short order. Hell, it wouldn't have been terribly shocking for Sam to get a visit of his own given his involvement in the events as they transpired.

But there was a good two, maybe three months in which Steve and Sam had been able to work at tracking down the man who used to be - and who might one day become again - Bucky Barnes before the good captain woke up in the wee hours of the dawn to the sound of displaced air, followed in short order by the sound of a foot tapping the floor in annoyance and a muffled snicker.

Steve managed to keep from wincing as he pushed himself up to find that, yep, his long-expected visitors had finally arrived.

Loki had her arms crossed over her chest, green eyes narrowed as she continued tapping that one boot. If she had been in her full gear the man _might_ have been worried that she was actually pissed off; given that she was in skinny jeans, riding boots, and a green sweater with thumb holes in the sleeves, chances were better that she was more ticked off that she had missed all the excitement.

Standing next to his sister, Thor was likewise dressed in more casual fare. His expression was stern disapproval but absence of Mjolnir was as reassuring as Loki's fuzzy sweater. The Asgardian looked as if he hadn't slept well recently, and most likely had been pretty busy with helping Jane and company get packed up and moved to a new, non-SHIELD affiliated location as quickly as possible. Which, granted, was probably why the alien siblings had taken so long to track him down, Steve mused.

On the other side of Loki was, not surprisingly, Clint. The man was still muffling his amusement, and looked slightly tanned as if he had been out in the sun a lot recently. Steve _thought_ he remembered something about Hawkeye being sent out on assignment to Afghanistan before everything he knew was proven to be wrong, and had probably just hitched a ride along with Thor and Loki as soon as he got back stateside. And that was if he hadn't tracked down Natasha first to see how she was handling the fallout.

"You," the sorceress said, voice even and terrifying enough in just _how_ angry she didn't sound, "are an idiot."

Steve's jaw dropped. "What?" he asked incredulously. "Didn't your parents teach you how to start a conversation?"

"You are correct. Good morning, Steven," Thor cut in, his tone a bit harsh but still nowhere near as frightening as his sister's. "How are you today? Wonderful to hear. Now please explain what in Hel you thought you were doing in trying to take down an enemy organization with only Lady Natasha, Lady Maria, and a new ally that we have not yet been introduced to."

Clint actually laughed out loud at the blond's gobsmacked face. "Yeah, they've been ranting for about an hour now," he said cheerfully, obviously enjoying the fact that he wasn't in trouble. "I think it's more that you didn't get any other backup _and_ invited a newbie to help instead of calling one of them that's got their backs up."

"Well, sorry," Steve drawled. "I didn't think that my service provider would let me get a call through to the other side of the galaxy on short notice."

"The only reason I'm not more pissed off it because one: I was in Asgard assisting Sif and Fandral with a problem, and two: at least you didn't manage to get yourself or my best friend killed," the Jotun replied, arms finally dropping to her sides as she rolled her eyes. "That being said, good work, Steven. But I can't help but notice that this? Is not your apartment."

Steve sighed and threw off his covers, smirking slightly as Thor threw one hand over his sister's eyes only to have her smack him a good one. He had on sleep pants and a wifebeater, after all. Standing up, he crossed the hotel room to cut on the small coffee pot provided and set about brewing a pot.

"That's because we're in Cambridge," Steve replied. "Give it about ten minutes and I'll introduce you guys to Sam. He's good people, you'll like him. And after that I'll explain _why_ we're not in D.C. aside from the whole government may be out to get us thing."

"Because that's so easy to ignore," Clint noted. "It's been a long time since I was the bad guy, this could be fun."


	2. Birds of a Feather

Much to Steve's chagrin, Clint and Sam bonded almost immediately.

The smartass of the group - Loki in this case, given that Tony was still somewhere in Manhattan at the moment doing whatever it was insane geniuses did after giving out their home address on national television and having their house blasted off the face of the map as a result - decided that it was a "bird thing" and then texted that information to her fellow smartass in New York.

Seriously, Steve's life was a either a situation comedy akin to _I Love Lucy_ or a black comedy similar to something like _M*A*S*H_. He just never knew when a new character was going to sweep in with their own brand of absurd.

"So, basically," Clint said, using his empty coffee cup to point at the two soldiers, "your missing and presumed dead best friend is actually alive, is or was the boogie man that every special agent in the alphabet agencies has heard stories about, and now you're trying to track him down to... what? Capture? Rehabilitate?"

"I would like to go on record as stating that I'm for rehabilitation," Loki piped up from where she was perched on the desk-slash-dresser. "Even if it turned out that SHIELD had a slight... reptile infestation," she continued with a slight wrinkling of her nose, "the therapy and chance to do some good in the world despite my previous actions proved beneficial."

Thor nodded his agreement. "It is not common in Asgard, as my sister could go on about for months," he added, grinning as said sister snorted at the understatement, "but I have seen for myself that it can work for some individuals. If you believe that your friend James Barnes can be returned to someone close to the man he was, then I'll support your quest."

Steve smiled. "Thanks, guys," he said. "I know it's not gonna be easy, especially since he's done such a good job covering his tracks, but I have to at least know he's okay and that Hydra isn't gonna snatch him up again."

"We could move a whole lot faster if I could figure out all the paperwork that Romanoff leaked on the web," Sam spoke up. "I've looked at it a thousand times by now, but all we can really do is follow what few breadcrumbs get posted online."

Clint perked up. "Someone's noting his movements?"

Sam nodded as Steve replied, "Just a couple tweets here and there, people who _think_ they recognize Bucky's face from trips they've taken to the Smithsonian or from old clips that have made their way online. We've been following the electronic trail for about a month now but can't make any sense of why he's going where he's going."

"Can I take a look?" the archer asked, pushing himself up off the bed and moving to the laptop situated next to the only woman in the room. At Steve's shrug, Clint pulled up a search engine and typed in... something that he thought would narrow down the files to some specifics. As he worked, the alien siblings moved to the other side of the room and began to converse quietly in Asgardian; Steve thought it was likely about him given that Thor kept glancing his way with a worried expression while Loki gestured towards him every other comment.

"She's kind of cute," Sam remarked, tilting his head towards the sorceress. "Saw her on the news during the whole thing in New York. Is she really blue sometimes?"

"Blue and cold to the touch," Steve replied. "But whatever you do, _don't_ call her Elsa. I'm pretty sure that would result in her showing off just how much better she is at controlling snow and ice than her Disney princess counterpart. Also," he added as a precaution, "I'd skip trying to hit on her. She's got a very protective older brother."

Sam snickered. "I can kinda see that from here. She's not really my type though." He paused before adding almost mischievously, "Her _brother,_ on the other hand..."

Having been friends with the man for a few months now - along with the fact that he was getting used to people being more open with their sexual preferences in the modern world he'd found himself in not even a full year ago - Steve's reaction was to roll his eyes and throw a light punch at Falcon's arm, who dodged the blow with another snort of amusement. "He's got a girlfriend," was the only remark he made.

"All the good ones, I swear to God," came the reply with a slightly over-dramatic sigh.

"Hey, guys," Clint called from the laptop, waving one hand to get their attention even as he kept his eyes focused on the screen. "I think I might have figured out why Barnes is traveling north the way he is."

Steve and Sam were at the desk in an instant; Loki and Thor were only a half step behind them. "What did you find?" Steve asked, voice slipping from _Steve Rogers_ to _Captain America_ without a thought.

Hawkeye frowned slightly and pointed to what appeared to be a Hydra mission report. "See this? It notes a mission completed by the Winter Soldier sometime in '78, in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. This one," he clicked over to another report, "was completed early in '65, a senate hopeful in Middleton, New Jersey. And this one," another report, "was in '85, in Bristol, Connecticut."

The agent leaned back in his chair and fixed his sharp eyes on his comrades. "I think that he might be remembering bits and pieces of the last seventy-something years," he said evenly. "He's going back to places where he's been sent on missions trying to find out who he is."

Steve's jaw tightened. "Then we'll just have to try and get ahead of him," he said. "What's the next location north after Cambridge?"


	3. 'Cause You're Building a Mystery

It took almost two and a half hours to get to Falmouth, Maine. According to the GPS, the trip honestly shouldn't have taken more than two, but the one thing that Steve had discovered about the "helpful" technology was that it often didn't take construction work or road closures into account.

Even so, they made fairly decent time and were able to get checked into a hotel in short order. As expected, Thor insisted that either Loki have her own room or share with him; the Jotun rolled her eyes, requested two rooms from the clerk - one with two fulls and a rollout bed, one with two fulls only - and promptly dragged Clint into the two-bed room behind her to gossip in private. Sam was just barely able to keep from laughing in the Asgardian's face, but his shaking shoulders told Steve all he needed to know as to which of the siblings his newest friend had thrown in with.

Once they had all settled in and taken a little time to rest from the drive, the quintet regrouped in the Starbucks across the street from their hotel. Sam had volunteered to place their orders, and soon returned to the corner table Clint had claimed with drinks in hand.

"So," the ex-pararescuer said as he passed Steve his plain black coffee, "what do we know about the job that was done here?"

Clint sipped his tea and cast a quick eye over the room before responding. "Pretty high profile human rights activist," he said evenly. "It was in the early 80s, and the mysterious death was highly publicized. By all appearances it seemed like Ms. Starr suffered from an overdose of prescription medication and died in her home. Those close to her, however, thought didn't sound like her at all."

Steve nodded and glanced at his StarkPad, reviewing the information Wikipedia had pulled up on Victoria Nutley Starr. She had been very well-loved and well-respected by her peers, and even her political rivals had been thrown by her death. Every conspiracy theorist on the web was one-hundred percent _positive_ that Starr had been murdered.

A quick cross-reference with the files Clint had sorted through trying to find the next possible stop on Bucky's travels confirmed that the conspiracy whacks were right this time: Vicki Starr had been assassinated by the Winter Soldier, because she was seen as a potential threat to Hydra. It was apparently only a stroke of luck that the activist's look-alike cousin, Tori Nutley, had escaped the same fate.

"Then the old Starr house should be the first place we check out," Steve said after a moment, glancing up to see Loki staring at the photograph of Starr with a slight frown. "After that, we can spread out, maybe check the cemetery if Bucky goes there instead to pay his respects. What's wrong, Lo?" he added when the sorceress didn't respond with more than a faint hum.

Loki shook her head, apparently realizing she'd zoned out on her friend. "Oh, sorry," she said in a small voice. "I just... something about this woman seems familiar to me. Not like _grew up playing sword and shield games_ familiar but sort of _think we met once or twice_ familiar."

Thor's forehead crinkled a bit in confusion before he leaned over for a closer look at the photo. One eyebrow lifted and he made a vague, somewhat puzzled sound. "She bears a striking resemblance to the Lady Venus who visited Asgard a few centuries ago."

Sam and Steve exchanged a loaded look as Clint thumped his head on the table with a groan. "Seriously?" the archer groaned. "Don't tell me that the Greco-Roman deities are actually another alien race, please don't."

Loki reached across the table and patted her unofficial brother on the head. "There, there," she said soothingly. "Even if I tell you that the Olympiads were terribly prone to pranking humans, rest assured that they are no more immortal than either my own or Thor's races."

"Anyways," Sam cut in, clapping his hands together before dropping them back onto the table, "we have two good places to start out from in finding Sergeant Barnes. So we can either all go to the house then the cemetery, or split into two groups where two of us go to the house and the other three to the cemetery or vice versa."

"Alternately, two of us can check the house, two the cemetery, and one stay behind at the hotel to act as ops," Steve added. He caught Loki and Clint's eyes, attempting to say without words that he'd like one of them to do some extra digging into the local history and maybe see what there was to say about Starr's look-alike cousin. Both the hawk and the witch nodded before the latter volunteered to take the ops position.

Steve's priority was still Bucky, and would remain so; but he could afford to let one of his brothers-in-arms take a few hours to solve another potential mystery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... yeah. Feel free to look up the not really an OC at all mentioned in this chapter. She's a pretty interesting Marvel canon character who I might want to play with some more in this universe...


	4. Author's Note

Hey, guys. Just a quick note here. I don't know when the next chapter will be posted because right now, I'm struggling a bit with real life issues. That being said, if anyone out there reading this would be willing to offer support either by signal boosting or contributing - monetary issues abound this month - my paypal email address is katsuko1978@gmail.com

This note will be deleted when the new chapter is posted.


	5. Author's Note

So... yeah.

Apparently, when I started on this segment of the series I was smoking the good crack. As in, I somehow thought there was something that needed fixing in _The Winter Soldier_.

Obviously, there wasn't. For the most part, the Captain America movies are spot-on and in no need of fanfic author intervention. What I obviously really wanted was a sequel to _To Become Whole._

But this story? Isn't it.

I am (obviously) discontinuing this story, although I will leave it linked in the archive and connected to the series until I figure out the next step.

**Author's Note:**

> About Clint's being in Afghanistan: there is a throwaway line towards the climax of the film, when Steve and company are heading in to try and stop the Insight Helicarriers, spoken between a couple of SHIELD agents that I'm pretty sure were non-Hydra. One of them asks where "he" has been, referring to a character that isn't present, and the other answers that "he's" been in Afghanistan for the past two months.
> 
> Ergo, my head canon as a result is that Clint is nowhere to be found in the film not because Renner is a busy busy man, but because he's out on assignment and has no clue wtf is going on back stateside.


End file.
